Ever heard this? “What did we do in class yesterday?”
You probably have. Not a big deal if it is only one student. However, it is never just one student and they always ask one right after another. The good thing is that your students want to stay caught up on the material in class. This is always a good thing. The problem is by taking the time explaining what you covered yesterday (multiple times) eats away at the class time you need to cover today’s material. Not to mention that parents are left out in the dark on what is going on unless they get a call or call the teacher, or at conference time. This is especially important in elementary and middle school when students are very forgetful. (Yes, I know it applies to high school, but they assume more responsibility then.)
Luckily, this is one area that technology is definitely able to assist with. You can use a class blog/wiki, send email updates, send text messages, or post twitter messages.
First, you can take a traditional route of printing and posting yesterday’s lessons. But in today’s world it is not enough to do this. Students forget what they need to do before they go home, sometimes forget any sheet that explains what they need to do, and then it is a wasted day.
Excerpt: I do not grade most of my daily work. The problem I have seen and heard about are students getting low grades because they have forgotten daily work and received zeros for it, even if they scored decent on their exams. So, if you are going to grade daily work, you need to take the effort to provide as many chances for students to know what the assignment is.
Class Blog/Wiki
This is probably the easiest option for teachers because of the familiarity of writing down what you did in class. There are many options for blogs and wikis which I talked about earlier. The beauty with this option is with a service such as Google Reader (or any RSS reader), parents can get notified easily of updates to the webpage. You could even assign a student to update the page instead of you taking time out to do so.
Emailing
Sometimes it might be easier to communicate with your students and parents via email. If your school has student emails set up you already have access to them. Otherwise, getting a list together of both student and parent emails will need to be compiled. You might want to allow parents to use an online form to respond, having the students use the form in class will prevent parents from having problems with it. Their students can help. With Google Docs, you can quickly create a form that will allow you to export to an Excel document. I really like this option because it makes communicating with students and parents about other issues very easy since you already have their email information.
Text Messaging
The first two options assume that the students and parents are able to easily access the Internet. This is not the case for most people. But, most people today do have cell phones. There are online sites that allow you to send mass text messages out to students and parents. One site that I feel that should be looked into for this option is Homework Now. A site Remember the Milk has many options including sending text message reminders and email reminders.
This option is really unique. But it is simple to use. All you need to do is inform your students and their parents what your twitter account is. You could create a new account just for your classroom needs. There is no other setup required.
Other Issues
With all of these options you obviously will need for the families to have technology at home. This is becoming more and more likely that they will. You also need to check with your school for any policies on communicating with your students and their parents. The good news is that all of the above mentioned communications leave a trail, so if there is a supposed problem you have proof of all your actions.
Definitely explaining your reasons for what you are doing to the students and parents are key to making this work. Hopefully, more assignments will be turned in and students will be better prepared for class.
Excellent ideas for staying in contact with parents and students. Building this type of community in your classroom keeps everyone involved in student learning. I like the Remember the Milk idea, I didn’t realize that they did text reminders.
After the first month of class, I assign students to keep blog/wiki/newsletter updated each day. The students really like being involved, it gives them an additional sense of ownership. I love that keeping parents and students in the loop is not all up to me!